The Myth of the "Good Guy"

During my first semester in the U.S. and I was just beginning to be friends with Felicity, she asked me why I didn't date. (She herself had an active dating life here in Columbia.) I told her, "I have a boyfriend back home". She began to ask me what Caye was like, and what I liked about Caye. "He's nice," I said. "And don't think that's a lame answer. That is in fact, the highest of praises," I added. To clarify, I told her that in my experience, nice guys are so very hard to find. It's easy enough to find men who are good looking or rich; but nice guys? They're the holy grail of relationships, as far as I was concerned. I elaborated further. "He's a good person. Most of all, he's kind."

Caye had always been Mr. Nice Guy; he even looked the part. Boyish good looks, a clean-shaven face, dimples, and a smile that would make any mother wish him on her daughter. Because he looked like such a good guy, people would always assume that when we had a fight, it was because of something I had done. If I told a friend that he and I had fought, she would say, "What did you do to Caye?" I remember telling Donna, my makeup artist at ABS-CBN, that Caye and I had had an argument. I shared this information with her after she asked me why my eyes looked like I had been crying. Her response to what I said... "Bakit mo naman inaway si Caye?"

Recent developments have shown that Caye is not the good guy that everyone (including Caye himself) thought he was. And I think this is why so many of my girl friends reacted with such disappointment and anger at how we broke up. Caye made many of us believe that there are nice guys out there that treat women well. Men who are decent; men who are good. I doubt that my friends would have reacted as strongly as they did if they had perceived Caye as a jerk. My friends were therefore not just disappointed for me, per se; they were also disappointed for THEMSELVES. Caye not just broke my heart, he also shattered THEIR belief in good guys. This was a recurring theme in some of my friends' responses to the situation. "He's not a nice guy after all. He fooled all of us." "I've lost some faith in good guys." "I really thought he was a nice guy."

This whole experience has left me and probably some of my friends just a tad more jaded. Maila's P.S. in her email summed up this cynicism in five words... "wala nga atang "good boy".

The Fallacy of the Platonic Friendship

For those of you who haven't as yet heard the gory details, here is a summary of events that led to our breakup.

Everything between Caye and I had been okay, despite my leaving in August 2005 to study here in Missouri. We managed to communicate and maintain our relationship with the use of webcams and email.

Before Christmas 2006, his best friend Corinne broke up with her boyfriend Richard. I remember during one of my video chats with Caye that she was there in his house with Popie (they are quite the triumvirate), and I remember feeling bad for her. (I have a soft spot for breakup survivors.) So during the holidays, they spent an inordinate amount of time together; Caye and Corinne, that is. Supposedly to comfort each other- Caye comforted Corinne about her breakup, she comforted him during a Gidget-less Christmas. They wrote about each other (praises, praises, praises!) on their blogs, they drew up a list of "100 things to do before I die" with each other, they ticked off said items together (Corinne wanted to go ice skating and learn to change a tire, and Caye obliged; she taught him to cook, which was on his list), they did yoga together, they drank almost every night together, they listened to "Postal Service" together.

Since I, unlike them, was not in denial and was seeing through all this all too clearly and the danger that their behavior posed, I emailed Caye about how worried I was about the time they were spending together, how they were discussing their hopes and dreams, and how they seemed to be getting too emotionally intimate. I made it clear to Caye that I saw exactly what was happening. He tried to reassure me by saying "Get that out of your head. It's unthinkable. Corinne is like a little sister to me." (Apparently, they later on decided that incest is best, but I digress.)

After emailing my concerns, Caye's behavior toward me deteriorated. He continued to see Corinne very often, and hardly logged on to chat with me. I again emailed him about how I was feeling neglected, and how I was getting very jealous of Corinne. The week before the breakup, I texted him, but he simply did not respond. For a week. He made no effort to contact me through the many ways available to him. That week was hell for me. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't focus on my studies. I didn't know if he was still alive, if he was in the hospital, but deep inside, I knew something bad was going on.

I asked Tintin to text Caye just to find out if was still alive. Since he did respond to her, and he didn't sound like he was in the ICU, I decided to give in to my rage, my sheer unadulterated anger for being totally ignored. After all, I was his girlfriend of almost nine years. I deserved to know what was going on, no matter how painful it would be. I didn't deserve to be shoved to the side while he threshed out his issues. At the very least, he should have informed me that he was thinking some things through.

Last Sunday, I decided I had had enough. I called his cell, and when he answered, he said he was in a movie and would call me later. I said I wanted to talk right then, but because of technical difficulties or his refusal to talk to me then, I waited until he got home so we could video chat.

He messaged me that he emailed me something, and that we should chat only after I had read it. So, there it was... the horrible words... "over the past couple of months I have developed feelings for Corinne...". What really made me furious was the phrase "she is one of my closest friends and the last person i thought i would have feelings for. But that is what happened." What did he mean this is "WHAT HAPPENED"? These things DON'T just happen, unless you're 15 years old and don't know better. Love is a decision. Emotional intimacy does not "just happen". You don't spend all your waking hours outside of work with a person and not expect feelings to develop!

Besides, if I could see it happening as early as Christmas, they sure as hell knew exactly what was going on. And they both allowed it. That's why I hold them both accountable; after all, it takes two to tango. They got in deep, and there is always a point where you can tell yourself "This is wrong. This has got to stop." But they both chose to cross that point, also known as the point of no return.

So that is "WHAT HAPPENED". Caye chose not to honor his commitment to me, and Corinne was his willing accomplice. They are not star-crossed innocent lovers who were suddenly struck by a lightning bolt of love. They are both guilty of causing all this heartbreak. As Gigi said in her last email, "Falling in love with someone doesn't JUST HAPPEN. This isn't the movies."

The Benefits of Technology (and having true friends)

As it turns out, technology has been very useful to me. Aside from Felicity, no one else is physically here to be a shoulder to cry on after my breakup. But after I emailed my friends and family about the news, everyone responded immediately. They emailed, they texted, they logged on to Yahoo! messenger and iChat, they called. I am so grateful to have such great friends, who are there for me even if they are miles and miles away. Yvette called from Africa, Gigi chatted with me from Australia, Anne texted and called me from New York, Chi, James and Kennie called from the Philippines, Anjou texted from Hong Kong, Karmina messaged me on Friendster from Philadelphia, Kuya Bong left a comment on my blog from Cambodia. Biljana emailed me from Serbia, Kuya and Liz from LA, Iva logged on to YM from Virginia; Gilson, Mariann, Eileen, Lissa, and John emailed from the Philippines, Tintin, Gines and Angel chatted with me from home as well.

Obviously, I practically emailed the whole world about my situation ;) But then again, in times like these, one has to lean heavily on one's friends. Since they are all great friends, they don't mind being leaned on anyway. I thank them all for being so supportive, and knowing exactly what to say to/text/message/email me to make me feel better. You are all great. Thanks so much for everything, and especially to those who are drinking a beer with me in spirit.

Breaking up in the New Millennium

Relationships have been given a new dimension by the electronic age. When I was in high school, text messaging and cellphones were non-existent. Therefore, when a boy liked a girl, he had to gather enough guts to ask for a girl's home phone number; and harder still, muster enough courage to actually call her and risk having her parents answer the phone. Girls, of course, would never think of asking for a guy's number.

Then came text messaging. It became easier to get a girl's, or a guy's cell number. A casual "I'll text you about our class meeting", or some such lame excuse would naturally result in an exchange of numbers. Of course, email has also been around for awhile. Now there's Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites where you can just message each other and establish relationships of some sort. Technology simply made starting relationships much easier, and changed the face of the wooing process.

But what do all these developments mean though when you're having a breakup? Well, you realize that you have quite a long electronic trail to erase to be able to vent your anger and ease your pain. Whereas before, a simple gathering of love letters and pictures and putting them in a shoebox would suffice, now, you have to attend to several things to erase him from your memory (in your hard drive or your brain). Since this is the first breakup I've had in the uber-Internet age, these are the things that I realized I've had to do.

1. Remove him from my Yahoo! messenger contact list.
2. Remove his friends from my Yahoo! messenger contact list.
3. Remove him from my iChat contact list.
4. Erase the message history of all our chats from my Adium messenger (some dating back to 2005). Also, remove his name from Adium messenger contact list.
5. Change my status on Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook from "In a Relationship" to "Single".
6. Remove the offending parties from my Friendster list of friends. (People who knowingly cause you pain don't deserve to be called friends.)
7. Remove his contact information from my Palm Pilot.
8. Remove his special folder from my email inbox.
9. Delete all his emails.
10.Delete all his digital photos in emails, and in my iPhoto library.
11.Remove his number from my cellphone.
12.Remove links to blogs of offending parties from my blog.

I haven't even finished doing all the above, among other things I have to do to be able to shove the past eight and a half years into the annals of history. And I'm sure there are other things I might have forgotten that are still floating around on the World Wide Web.

On the plus side, I don't have to bother with shoeboxes or letter-burning anymore. Deleting someone from your life is now simply a wireless mouseclick away. If I can't have the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, I'll settle for the temporary solace of the Caye-free computer.

Old Dog, New Tricks

I've been feeling overwhelmed by school, and it's barely been a month since classes began. I thought about why I felt so swamped, and I realized that aside from signing up for 15 credit hours (the usual full-time grad school load per semester is only 9 credit hours), the classes I've signed up for all entail learning new computer programs and many other skills. For my photojournalism class, for example, there are so many skills I need to learn, and fast. Composing shots, knowing how my camera works and how to make good use of light, telling a story through your pictures, etc. But on top of these basic skills any photojournalist needs to learn, I also need to learn Photoshop and InDesign, which I am only vaguely familiar with.

Then for my mapping for journalists class, I need to learn to use a mapping software called ArcView which enables you to plot a lot of information onto a map. And for my work at globaljournalist.org , I've been assigned the task of webmaster (lord knows why, since I know next to nothing about webmastering), and so I have to learn how to use Dreamweaver. ARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!

My poor brain can only take so much. Maybe if I got exposed to all these programs when I was in college (and much younger), it would have been a breeze to learn them all. Instead, I'm learning them now, when my brain cells have been diminished in number by various toxic substances, and the synapses are no longer what they were. I have to almost plod along until my brain somehow absorbs the information.

Despite my awareness that my mind just isn't what it used to be, I am happy that I am still able to learn at all. Not as quickly as I would've been able to years ago, but nonetheless, it remains quite a feat that this old dog is still able to learn some newfangled tricks.